BEIJING (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

I love how they keep ignoring their problems over there. "Our beloved principal was killed". Really? If he was so beloved why did this happen? "This sort of thing doesn't happen here, just a good ol town of respectful people!". No, it just did happen there and I doubt you guys are a bunch innocents. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!". Yeah, keep chanting that.

They immediately isolate the problem as "some crazy" so they can ignore their screwed up society which is the root.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

Yet, notice that nobody died. I mean give that man a gun, and we all have seen what happens, yet they are exactly the same. I guess I'd be for gun control if I thought it would work, but I don't think that prohibition would do much seeing as how widespread guns already are, but lets not act as if a knife and a gun are some how the same, or that one isn't much more dangerous than the other.

J"Our beloved principal was killed". Really? If he was so beloved why did this happen?

While a bit tactless, I generally agree with the rest of your post. This though? How the hell would you know? Maybe the principal was trying to intervene and got shot (ie he wasn't a planned target). Given the fact the shooter was in two classrooms and not school offices, I'd say that's a very likely scenario. Sure, he might not be beloved, but I sincerely doubt his personality had anything to do with today.

J"Our beloved principal was killed". Really? If he was so beloved why did this happen?

While a bit tactless, I generally agree with the rest of your post. This though? How the hell would you know? Maybe the principal was trying to intervene and got shot (ie he wasn't a planned target). Given the fact the shooter was in two classrooms and not school offices, I'd say that's a very likely scenario. Sure, he might not be beloved, but I sincerely doubt his personality had anything to do with today.

Yet, notice that nobody died. I mean give that man a gun, and we all have seen what happens, yet they are exactly the same. I guess I'd be for gun control if I thought it would work, but I don't think that prohibition would do much seeing as how widespread guns already are, but lets not act as if a knife and a gun are some how the same, or that one isn't much more dangerous than the other.

They are the same, in principle. So is the idea that disarmed, helpless people are sitting ducks during such attacks. It shows that being armed is empowering, and being disarmed leads to more deaths. Therefore, the solution is to be armed to defend yourself.

Yet, notice that nobody died. I mean give that man a gun, and we all have seen what happens, yet they are exactly the same. I guess I'd be for gun control if I thought it would work, but I don't think that prohibition would do much seeing as how widespread guns already are, but lets not act as if a knife and a gun are some how the same, or that one isn't much more dangerous than the other.

They are the same, in principle. So is the idea that disarmed, helpless people are sitting ducks during such attacks. It shows that being armed is empowering, and being disarmed leads to more deaths. Therefore, the solution is to be armed to defend yourself.

Things don't always work out so simply in the real world.

"After we adjusted for confounding factors, individuals who were in possession of a gun were 4.46 (95% conﬁdence interval [CI]=1.16, 17.04) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession....

"A few plausible mechanisms can be posited by which possession of a gun increases an individual’s risk of gun assault. A gun may falsely empower its possessor to overreact, instigating and losing otherwise tractable conﬂicts with similarly armed persons. Along the same lines, individuals who are in possession of a gun may increase their risk of gun assault by entering dangerous environments that they would have normally avoided. 58–60 Alternatively, an individual may bring a gun to an otherwise gun-free conﬂict only to have that gun wrested away and turned on them."
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=dennis_culhane

"After we adjusted for confounding factors, individuals who were in possession of a gun were 4.46 (95% conﬁdence interval [CI]=1.16, 17.04) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession....

"A few plausible mechanisms can be posited by which possession of a gun increases an individual’s risk of gun assault. A gun may falsely empower its possessor to overreact, instigating and losing otherwise tractable conﬂicts with similarly armed persons. Along the same lines, individuals who are in possession of a gun may increase their risk of gun assault by entering dangerous environments that they would have normally avoided. 58–60 Alternatively, an individual may bring a gun to an otherwise gun-free conﬂict only to have that gun wrested away and turned on them."
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=dennis_culhane

Spare me this garbage. As if I need you to try and convince me it's in my best interest to hand over my guns. You can post all the ridiculous sophistry and meaningless statistics in the world - it won't change the fact that being armed is empowering and being disarmed is disempowering. Anyone with an iota of common sense can figure that out.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

Yet, notice that nobody died. I mean give that man a gun, and we all have seen what happens, yet they are exactly the same. I guess I'd be for gun control if I thought it would work, but I don't think that prohibition would do much seeing as how widespread guns already are, but lets not act as if a knife and a gun are some how the same, or that one isn't much more dangerous than the other.

In addition, almost all of the victims were children so it was probably easy for the man to overpower them. He would have found it significantly harder to victimize 22 adults in such a setting with only a knife.

In addition, almost all of the victims were children so it was probably easy for the man to overpower them. He would have found it significantly harder to victimize 22 adults in such a setting with only a knife.

He would have found it even more difficult to victimize 22 adults in such a setting had they all been armed with guns. If the principle or any of the teachers at that school had been armed, then there's a chance the shooter would've been killed earlier. Many children's lives (or maybe even just 1) could have been saved.

Being armed = empowerment to defend yourself and others.
Being disarmed = means you're totally helpless and the killer will definitely have his way with you...

On December 14th 2012, two schools on different sides of the world were attacked by men wielding weapons. In one, 22 children were injured but none died; in the other, 27 young boys and girls were killed*. The difference? The second killer had a gun, the first didn't.

A spate of attacks on schools in China began in March 2010 and carried on into 2011. Given the recent attacks in Guangxi and and Henan this year, I think it's fair to say the 'spree' has continued. However, in all those attacks, knives or other edged-weapons were used. As Andrew Sullivan points out, there were a total of 21 fatalities in all of the Chinese attacks over a two year period (24 if you include the attacks in 2012). The recent shooting in Newtown, Connecticut alone left at least 27 people dead.

The root causes behind such attacks or rampages are largely the same in both China and the US: stress, depression, anxiety, and, most of all, shamefully poor mental health care. All of these factors should and must be treated, but we can't get away from the fact that the vast difference in the respective deaths toll is based on one factor alone, gun control.

Commentators in the US and elsewhere will hold up the tragedy in Henan and use it to say "See, these attacks happen everywhere", and indeed, the potential for massacres, attacks, and rampages of the sort that happened in Henan and Newtown is inherent in every society. But societies which allow their citizens easy access to firearms, of any type, are placing their citizens at a far higher risk of death and injury than those that do not.